once my chicks dried off in the incubator last year i just put them straight onto the pine shavings. one of my friends who has raised hundreds of chickens turkeys geese and ducks in total was instructing me what to do and he didnt even bring up paper towels. ocasionally the chicks would peck at and maybe eat a few small pieces but no real problems arose. if you give them a better tasting alternative like hard boiled egg yolks made slightly pasty with a few drops of water then they will eat that instead of wood.

One of my first "mistakes" when starting with my chicks was to not put paper towels down over the bedding. By the time I thought about it they were two days old. As I was observing them I noticed that yes, some of them did pick up the flakes, but they spit em right back out. When I mentioned to my (former chicken farmer) SO that I needed to put paper towels down he looked at me as if I was crazy. In the end I never used the paper towels and my chicks did just fine. I don't know if the fact that I use large flake pine shavings made a difference or not, but I don't think so.